Let's Talk About Retaliation Affairs
- Nov 13
- 2 min read
A tit for a tat... an eye for an eye. Being betrayed is a powerful motivator for revenge; especially via giving onesself the same experience your unfaithful partner got.
Some affairs aren’t as much about longing or chemistry as they are about unexpressed pain. I can't tell you how many people I work with in affairs who have felt betrayed themselves. An affair can be their subconscious (or conscious) way to even the score.
Some feel betrayed through relationship behaviors like being chronically unappreciated and taken advantage of. Others may have discovered their spouse's infidelity years ago and later ended up in an affair themselves. When a person feels hurt, the best case scenario is they don't feel quite so badly about doing the hurting. The worst case scenario is that they feel justified in it.
The affair is a way to take back control, regain lost power, and to establish self-worth again. But underneath all of that is deep hurt that ultimately needs to be dealt with. The revenge affair doesn't fix what's broken; it just creates more brokenness, and more problems to deal with than the ones that already caused all the relationship vulnerability in the first place.
What To Do About It:
The real healing happens for all of us when we stop reacting from our wounds and start caring for them instead. When we do the work to find our voice, reconnect to our worth, and establish criteria for healthy relationship behavior (for ourselves AND our spouse) we're on the right track. Here are some of my top tips on how to deal so you can heal:
Let yourself feel the anger instead of acting it out. We're taught to suppress our anger and so it comes out sideways, as resentment or retaliation later. Anger needs to be expressed in real time, then unpacked all the way down to the source, in order to find clarity.
Ask yourself what you were trying to restore or prove through the affair, and find a healthier way to meet that need. The Get Unstuck e-book is a powerful place to start.
Reclaim power through truth and boundaries. Write yourself a letter expressing the truth of how you feel, and the boundaries that you wish you'd enacted around your original pain. Then explore, perhaps with a trusted therapist, how you can better live that out in the present.
If you need help because of an affair, we're here for you -- it's what we do. You can explore self-help resources that are expertly designed to help unfaithful spouses, affair partners, and betrayed spouses move forward, one of our private membership communities, or schedule a confidential session.
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